
ADDRESSES 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



ifet0i:ii:il #00etii, 






IX THE 



REPKESENTATIYES' HALL, M0:N^TPELIER, 



OCTOBER 16, 1866. 



PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY 



MONTPELIER : 

WALTOX's STEA:^! miNTIXG KSTABLISHMRXT, 

1866. 



/ 



ADDRESSES 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 






r/- ■» 



REPRESENTATIVES' HALL, MONTPELIER, 



OCTOBER 16, 18GG. 




PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. 



MONTPELIER : 

Walton's steam printing establishment. 

1866, 



^\[. 

V6^ 



In House of Representatives, Oct. 18, 1866. 

Mr. Ross, of St. Johnsbuiy, offered the followino- 
resolution, which was read and adopted on the part of 
the House : 

Mesolved hij the Senate and House of Rejjresenta- 
atives. That the Secretary of the Senate and Clerk 
of the House be directed to procure to be printed for 
the use of the General Assembly, one thousand copies 
of the addresses by Senator Edmunds, and others, 
before the Yermont Historical Society, on Tuesday 
evening the 16th inst. 

J0H:N" H. FLAGG, Clerk. 

In Senate, Oct. 18, 1866, 
Adopted in concurrence. 

HEXRY CLARK, Secretary of Senate, 



>c 



f 4U 



THE LIFE, CHAEACTEK AND SERVICES 
OF SOLOMOIS^ FOOT. 



BY HON. GEO. F. EDMUNDS, U. S. SENATOR. 



Mr. Preside7it and Gentlemen of the Society: 

The quality of mind Avhich we call curiosity, is one 
whence springs many of our greatest achievements. 
It is the search on which the visible and apparent 
present sends the mind back over the mighty past for 
the causes and antecedents that have, through chan- 
nels and by processes more or less direct, but always 
logical, produced the results which engage our wonder, 
our admiration, or our dislike, as the case may be. 
The fuel it has furnished has kindled the fires of all 
invention, and has brought to their present wonderful 
and ahnost miraculous state of advancement, many of 
those sciences and arts most useful, practically, to 
men. And it has no less operated beneficially in 
presenting to each succeeding age and generation, the 
lives and peculiarities of notable men of times jDast, 
whose characters have in greater or less degree 
impressed themselves upon the growth of society, and 
so transfused them into the very life of after times. 



4 Life, Character and Services 

From fountains thus unsealed, the historian deduces 
the principles of moral and political economies ; and 
the just ambition of those who aspire to greatness, 
beholds the processes and the causes — always in the 
main constant — which have led men to success, or 
driven them to failure. 

]^ot only, then, as a sweet tribute of respect to 
those who have worthily filled exalted stations among 
us, but as a means of positive good to society in the 
respects I have mentioned, do we turn on fit occasions, 
to gratify our curiosity in respect to their lineage and 
lives, and to trace their acted and completed parts on 
that great stage of the world, where " all the men 
and women are players." 

In this spirit, therefore, I lay before the society 
some of the facts, incidents, and characteristics relating 
to the late Hon. Solomon Foot, with such brief notice 
of current events as elucidates them. 

The subject of this paper was descended from 
English ancestors who emigrated to this country, and 
settled in Weathersfield, Conn., early in the seven- 
teenth century. 

From this stock has sprung a most numerous 
posterity, numbering, as appears from the book of the 
Foote Genealogy, in 1849, more than three thousand 
persons. 

An amusing record respecting one of his ancestors 
exists in the early archives of New Haven. It states 
that 

" At a County Court holdcn at New Haven, Aug. 
"4, 1702, Sergeant Nathaniel Foote, of Brandford 



of Solomon Foot. 5 

" appearing by summons to this court, to answer the 
" presentment and complaint of the grand jury against 
" him for hiring his negro servant Cush to set in Mr. 
" Malthie's pew on the first Sabbath, which they judge 
"to be contrary to rehgion and profanation of the 
" Sabbath." 

Sergeant Foote pleaded not guilty, and it was 
postponed for trial. ]^o further entry appears. 

Thus, at that early day, the status of the negro was 
an " apple of discord," as it is now ; and it was " con- 
trary to religion" that he should sit in Mr. Malthie's 
pew, at least on the ^' first Sabbath." 

That grand jury, no doubt, got their law from a 
very early English case, in which it was decided that 
the action of trover would lie for the conversion of a 
number of negroes, the court saying that had they 
been christians no action could be maintained for them ; 
but inasmuch as they appeared to be infidels, and the 
subjects of an infidel prince, the court gave judgment 
for the plamtifF. 

The family spread over Connecticut and Massachu- 
setts, and Dr. Solomon Foot, the father, removed to 
Cornwall in this State in 1792, where the subject of 
this notice was born on the 15th day of IS^ovember, 
A. D. 1802. His parents were jjersons of staid and 
highly respectable character, fair examples of the 
Vermont citizen. From them Mr. Foot received those 
earliest impressions, which generally, or frequently, 
become the basis of the traits of character which we 
often class as in the nature of instincts. 

The father died in 1811, leaving the young boy to 
the sole charge of his mother, who is said to have been 



6 Life, Character and Services 

a woman of great kindness of heart and of highly 
prudent judgment. Under her care and instruction 
he passed several of those forming years — if I may 
so call them, — in that life which almost every one of 
those here present knows so well — and which we all 
look back upon, through w^hatever lights or glooms 
surround our lives, with fondest recollections — the 
sweet, hopeful, visionary life of a country boy. Then 
the bountiful face of nature smiled upon us like a 
mother and a playmate ; then the opening studies and 
reflections of our young lives wore, all of them, the 
white robes of truth and beauty ; then the present Avas 
one round joy, and the future was seen only through 
gateways of gold. 

From that distant point the lad saw, in his young 
am])ition, over a space of thirty years, his own place 
in the ^National Congress, and accounted for his 
temj)orary neglect of work upon a farm where he was 
employed, by replying, when asked what he was 
thinking about, that he was thinking what he should 
do when he should come to be a Member of Congress. 

At the early age of fifteen he began his regular stud- 
ies preparatory to a college course, under the instruc- 
tion of Dr. Carpenter of Whiting, looking with that 
intuitive judgment in this respect so coim^non to all 
boys — and which sometimes outruns their fathers — 
upon learning and education as the onl}^ sure means 
to power and usefulness in whatever sphere of life he 
might be placed. 

The following winter (1818,) he taught a common 
school in one of the back districts of Crown Point, 
'^. Y. Here, amid embarrassments encountered 



of Solomon Foot. 7 

among people in humble circumstances, he prosecuted 
the study of Latin and Greek, aided only by his 
grammars and lexicons and his own perseverance. I 
am informed on tlie best authority, that the good 
people among whom he "boarded roimd" were much 
exercised at these studies, and not knowing the 
character or the sounds thereof, thought he was 
certainly reviving the black art, or some other fearful 
evil. 

The following year he entered Newton Academy, 
and continued his studies under Dr. Dewey, (now of 
Moriah, ]!^. Y.,) who says that he remembers him as a 
young man of line abilities, very studious, and one 
that seldom laughed or indulged in merriment. 

He entered Middlebury College at the age of 
nineteen, the intervening time having been spent in 
studying, teaching, and preparing himself for the 
manly struggles of life. 

He graduated with honor in 1826, and immediately 
became Preceptor of Castleton Academy. After a 
year spent in this labor, he received the high compli- 
ment — not being an alumnus of that institution — of 
being appointed a tutor in the University of Yermont. 
After a year spent there, preferring a more active life, 
he returned to the Castleton Academy, where he 
continued its Principal until 1831, — meanwhile study- 
ing law, and devoting himself, with his characteristic 
earnestness and energy, to the strengthening of the 
school, and the erection of a spacious and handsome 
Academy building in that charming village. 

He was admitted to the bar in Rutland County in 
1831, and established himself in practice at Rutland. 



o Life, Character and Services 

He was now to begin the chosen business of his 
life. All that had gone before was only preHminary 
and incidental, bridghig over the period that many 
vvho now hear me Imow well must be so passed, when 
there is no hereditary patrimony wherewith to meet 
the exjienses of education and jjreparation for a start 
at the bar. 

His characteristics, thus far in his course, had been 
those which more generally produce success and 
usefulness, than the greatest genius, the finest wit, or 
tlie profoundest learning. They had been an unvary- 
ing gentleness of disposition and demeanor, an 
untarnished private life and character — tainted by no 
vice or suspicion, — and a st.eadfixst persistence in the 
course of life he had adojited. 

The SujDreme Court at that period was composed 
of Chief Justice Hutchinson, and Justices Williams, 
Royce, Baylies and Phelps — names, most of them, 
redolent of fame, and which have shed a lustre of 
renown, unexcelled in any State, upon the Bench of 
Vermont, and have given law not only to Vermont, 
but have contributed largely to the jurisprudence of 
the whole nation. 

The Bar, which had produced such Judges, was 
unexhausted of its strength. There were Fletcher 
and Mattocks, Aldis and Adams, Allen and Marsh, 
Bates and Chipman, Clark and Koyce, Bennett and 
Aiken, Bradley and Kellogg, CoUamer and Cushman, 
Hebard and Buck, Redfield and Upham, Tracy, Peck 
and Dillingham, and numerous other strong men, who 
had either achieved a reputation, or were fighting 
their way to it. 



of Solomon Foot. 9 

Into this arena Mr. Foot entered and soon attained 
a position, and reaped the harvest of success. 

AVithout full means of forming- an accurate judg- 
ment, I think I may say, that he was more distinguished 
as a jur}^ advocate than in the trial of cases reserved. 

In the former, his fine personal presence, his univer- 
sal popularity, and his simple earnestness and truth, 
could not foil to impress a jury most favorably. 
And in the latter, his cases were always well and 
industriously prepared, and his arguments forcible. 
But I do not think he possessed, in the highest, degree, 
that aggressive intellectual combativeness, and analyti- 
cal subtlety of mind, which, fortified by learning, has 
produced the greatest lawyers. 

But this is not, perhaps, the place to discuss at 
large the philosophy or the romance of the law. 
Suffice it to say that success in it is, in general, as in 
all other pursuits, attained only by devotion to its 
studies and attention to its duties in the outset, and 
so thenceforward. Mr. Foot so attained it. The 
great Mr. Justice Buller, when in mature life he 
cautioned a youth of sixteen against being led astray 
by the example of others, said, looking back with 
pardonable complacency to his own fortitude : " If 1 
" had listened to the advice of some of those Avho 
"called themselves my friends when I was young, 
" instead of being a Judge of the King's Bench, I 
" should have died long ago a prisoner in the King's 
"Bench Prison." 

In 1832, the rising young lawj^er espoused with 
great enthusiasm the cause of Henry Clay as a 
candidate for the Presidency, and prepared the able 

2 



10 L'^f^i Character and Services 

address issued by a Convention held at Montpelier, to 
the freemen of Vermont upon that subject. He thus 
entered upon pohtical life with that party Avhich has, 
with most rare intervals, been composed of the large 
majority of the citizens of Yermont, and the legitimate 
progress and growth of whose principles has ever 
since oj^posed a bulwark against interference with the 
largest personal liberty and equality, as well as against 
the latitudinary and separative doctrines of what was 
called democracy. 

In those days a hollow truce had been concluded by 
the Missouri Compromise, between Liberty and 
Slavery, and the " irrepressible conflict of opposing 
civilizations" had been thus postponed until a later 
day. 

But the theories of government, identical with the 
one side or the other of that great question, thus left 
to smother for a mighty conflagration, were in active 
contest. 

On one side, based upon the grand idea that the 
people, were, under the Constitution, nationalized, and 
that the interest of the whole was the interest of 
every part, were the doctrines of a protective tariff, 
whence only could come the largest development of 
our resources, a national currency regulated by the 
national law and the national necessities, and a system 
of internal improvements whereby easy and constant 
intercommunication between remote parts of the 
country, should make the joeople homogeneous, and 
identify their interests and feelings. 

On the other side were the opposite doctrines of 
free trade, — the selfish scheme of that class whose 



of Solomon Foot. 11 

occupation it was to im])oi't foreign merchandise to 
sell, and of that other class which enjoyed, it is 
thought, the kingly monopoly of producing cotton 
and tobacco for sale in foreign markets, — and the high 
State rights' doctrine of local currency, and commer- 
cial regulations and means of transit. The basis of 
these latter doctrines was a professed jealousy of 
centralized power. But the real controversy Avas 
logically the same as that which culminated in a 
rebellion, and a national victory; the fair fruits of 
which, after a thirty years' struggle, some people, it is 
said, are seriously disposed to turn over to the enemy. 

As a member, then, of the whig party, Mr. Foot 
accepted its principles with real faith, and defended 
and propogated them with all his power, — standing by 
them and their legitimate outgrowth, with an unswerv- 
ing fidelity to the end of his life. 

In 1833, he was elected to the legislature, by the 
people of Rutland. He was again elected in 1836. 
In that same year, also, he was a member of the 
constitutional convention which abolished the govern- 
or's council and established the Senate, a change now 
generally conceded to have been an eminently wise 
one, but which met with great opposition, and Avas 
entered upon with much misgiving. Mr. Foot was 
among the foremost advocates of the measure, and 
contributed as largely, perhaps, as any one man to its 
success. 

In 1837 and 1838, he was again a member of the 
House, and its Speaker. 

The duties of this office he discharged mth 
admirable ease, dignity and correctness, so that he 



12 Life, Oharacter and Services 

became, in the minds of the members, the model of a 
good Speaker. 

In 1839 he married Miss Emily Fay, daughter of 
the late William Fay, of Eutland. This estimable 
lady, however, soon died, and he afterwards married 
Mrs. Anna Dana, daughter of the late Henry Hodges, 
of Clarendon, in whose congenial society, surrounded 
by all that could make life happy, he passed the 
remainder of his days. 

In the great political revolution of 1840, Mr. Foot, 
in common with his party, supported Harrison and 
Tyler, wdio were elected. 

The whig party, then long in an apparently hopeless 
minority, had seen the government so conducted as to 
bring distress upon all the producing interests of the 
country, and ruin upon its citizens engaged in 
manufacturing. The public finances were in a state 
of utter derangement, and political corruption was 
coming to be looked upon by many as an amiable 
weakness rather than crime. 

From its chronic w^eakness in the Southern States, 
the leaders of the whig party should have known that 
there was a fixed logical cause for its unpopularity 
there, in the fact, as the highly cultivated and far- 
seeing southern statesmen saw, that its legitimate 
tendencies were hostile to the institution of slavery; 
and they, in selecting candidates for the chief offices 
in the nation, should have been sure that their leading 
and controlling political principles were sound, and 
were not a mere temporary spasm of sense and virtue, 
produced by current events. 



of Solomon Foot. 13 

But blind to those considerations and seduced by 
the cry of expediency, the party nominated Mr. Tyler 
on the ticket with Gen. Harrison, and the whigs went 
" for Tyler, therefore, without a why or wherefore." 
But General Harrison had scarcely assumed the reins 
of government ere he died, and Mr. Tyler came to the 
office of President, and the party that had elected him 
found itself betrayed and rendered perfectly powerless 
to put in operation the principles upon which it had 
carried the elections. 

In this state of parties and politics, Mr. Foot entered 
Congress, taking his seat with his eminent colleagues, 
Collamer, Dillingham and Marsh, on the fourth day 
of December, 1843. 

His first act (aside from voting) was to present a 
petition from his constituents, praying for a practical 
recognition of the Vermont doctrine of jDrotection of 
American producers against the unfriendly and 
ruinous competition of foreign nations. 

He served through both the sessions of that Congress 
on the then important committee on Indian Affairs. 

His first sj)eech was delivered on the fourth day of 
Jime, 1844, on the political principles of the whig 
party, defending them as essential to the welfare of 
the country, and prophesying their ultimate adoption, 
although then thwarted by the adverse circumstances 
I have named. 

In the twenty-ninth Congress he again served on 
the committee on Indian Aff'airs. 

In this Congress he gave active support to the whig- 
side of the great questions then pending, namely, the 



14 Life, Character und Services 

admission of Texas, the Mexican war and the Oregon 
boundary question. 

On the sixth of February, 1846, he made an elabor- 
ate speech on the latter topic, characterized by logical 
clearness of statement and conclusion, and by high 
rhetorical taste. In the course of it he eloquently 
vindicated the people of Vermont from the aspersions 
of Mr. Chipman, of Michigan, who was himself a 
Vermonter by birth, and administered the following 
castigation to his opponent : 

"I trust, Mr. Chairman, that I have an ample 
apology for this digression, in alluding to my na- 
tive State, and briefly vindicating the character 
•^of her people, in the attempt which was made 
^ some days ago to cast a sneer, an aspersion, upon 
Mier, by one of her own sons upon this floor. — 
^ I have only to say, in reply to that attempt, that he 
^ who has the taste and the heart to illegitimize his 
*^OAvn birth, so far as to repudiate his parentage, 
^commends himself less to the rebuke than to the 
^ commiseration of his friends ; and, while I trust that 
'" Vermont has but 07ie son who would make it a 
•^ virtue j^ublicly to avow it a misfortune to him, that 
^ he was born upon her soil, I am quite sure she has 
^ hut one son who could utter the unnatural sentunent, 
■^ without mortiflcation or reproach to her." 

On the sixteenth of July, 1846, in addressing the 
House on the Mexican wai*, replying to the arguments 
of the friends of the president, that Congress ought 
not to bring into judgment the acts of the Executive, 
he defended the constitutional rights of the represent- 
atives of the people in this fine specimen of genuine, 
earnest American eloquence: 



of Solomon Foot. 15 

" I have," he said, " no sympathy with the sentiment 
which has been uttered on this floor, that we ought 
not to condemn the acts of the administration 
relative to the war, for the reason assigned by its 
defenders, that its tendenc}^ will be to paralyze the 
arm of the executive government. Sir, I rejDudiate 
and reject this vile and infamous sentiment as an 
attempt to revive here the anti-republican and odious 
doctrine of monarchists, that '^the king can do no 
wrong.' If the President of the United States shall 
transcend his constitutional authority, and causelessly 
involve his country in the calamity of war, are we to 
be told that no voice of warning or rebuke is to be 
heard ? When the great high priest of our political 
church shall be rushing to the temple of liberty with 
blazing torch in hand to fire its sacred altars, are we 
to be told that no arm must be raised to stay the 
impending desecration ? Go, with such doctrines as 
these, to the crawling and cringing serfs of the 
rotten and crumbling despotisms of the Old World. 
They are unfit to be uttered in the legislative halls 
of a free Republic. They are unfit to be addressed 
to an American citizen, claiming the right and 
exercising the privileges, and standing up in the 
bearing and dignity of an American freeman." 



And again, on the 10th of February, 1847, speaking 
of an intimation in a message of a former Tennessee 
President, Mr. Polk, that those members of Congress, 
who censured the conduct of the Executive in carrying 
on the war, were guilty of constructive treason, he 
said : 



""Wliere does he find authority or precedent for 
" sending into these legislative halls a bulletin of de- 
"nunciation against any portion of the American jdco- 
"ple, or their representatives, who may have formed 
" and expressed opinions not in conformity Avitli such 
"as he professes to entertain?" 



16 Life, Character and Services 

" When the chief magistrate of this Repubhc shall 
'■ become so far unmindful of the dignity and proprie- 
*" ties of his station as to assume the character of a 
" volunteer accuser of his fellow citizens ''^ ^ ''^ 
'^ for no other cause than that they have the intelli- 
" gence to form, and the independence to speak their 
"" opinions, ^* * ^ how shall the audacious insult 
'^ be met? Shall it be received with silent, trembling 
''^submission? Shall it be received with acquiescence, 
*^or even with gracious words of remonstrance? Or 
" shall it not rather be met with that prompt and bold 
"rebuke, with that scornful defiance Avhich alone be- 
" comes the action and the character of free born men !" 

These sentiments are not without their application 
to affairs at the present day, when the constitutional 
rights, and even the regular existence of Congress, are 
assailed and questioned by the same party who then, as 
now, upheld executive usurpation, and whose present 
head and leader was then a Member of Congress from 
Tennessee, and voting in opposition to Mr. Foot. 

Thus history renews itself, "swinging round the 
circle" of events, but leaving still, we are sure, the 
spirit of the constitution, the spirit of universal justice, 
■security, and civil and political equality, with the 
people. 

Time does not permit me here to review the history 
of those momentous events. The disorders of the 
present period are their logical consequents, and teach 
us how to go to the bottom of the evil before we fancy 
that a cure is effected. 

In these Congresses the contemporaries of Mr. Foot 
w^ere Hamlin, "Winthrop, Adams, Hale, King, "Wise, 
Bhett, Stephens, Garrett Davis, Vinton, Giddings 



of Solomon Foot. 17 

Douglas, Jacob Thompson, Toombs, and Anclrey>r 
Johnson of Tennessee. 

Among such associates and rivjds, he acted with 
honor to himself and to his State, and although not 
endowed with all the qualities of a great leader, he 
had none of the vices which too often disfigure the 
characters of such men. Always courteous, patient 
and industrious, he far excelled, in usefulness and solid 
merit, many who bore parts more conspicuous and 
commanding. 

He declined an election to the 30th Congress, and 
resumed the practice of his profession at Kutland. In 
the same year he was again a member of the Legisla- 
ture, and was again the Speaker of the House, bring- 
ing to the discharge of the delicate and onerous duties 
of that important station, the same pre-eminent quali- 
ties that afterwards distinguished him as President 
pro tempore of the Senate of the United States. 

From that time until he was elected a Senator in 
Congress in the fall of 1850, he successfully pursued 
the practice of the law, strengthening his hold upon 
the good will of the people by the diligence and integ- 
rity of his professional career, and by the purity of 
his private life. 

He took his seat as Senator from Vermont, in the 
thirty-second Congress, in December, 1851, his col- 
league being, then, the late Hon. Mr. Upham; while, 
on the roll of the Senate, were the now flxmous names 
of Clay, Douglas, Cass, Houston, Sumner, "Wade, and 
Seward, and another name, not famous, J. Davis of 
Mississippi. During this session of Congress I fnul 
no record of his entering into debate, but he appears 

3 



18 Life, Character and Services 

to have served industriously on the Committee on 
Pensions; and with his constant fidehty to principle, 
and faithfulness to the sentiments of his constituents, 
on the 29th of March, 1852, he voted with the small 
band of disciples of liberty and progress. Dodge of 
"Wisconsin, Hale, Seward, Sumner, and Wade, against 
the intolerant and tyrannical democratic majority, which 
determined to lay upon the table, without reference or 
debate, a i-espectful petition of American citizens, 
praying that some measure might be inaugurated look- 
ing to the extinction of slavery. 

During the second session of that Congress he 
served on the Committee on Post Offices and Post 
Poads, and also on that on Revolutionary Claims. 

His first speech in the Senate was during that ses- 
sion, (Jan. 15, 1853,) on the death of Senator Upham. 
I have only space to quote one passage, which illus- 
trates as well the simplicity and good taste that almost 
always characterized his rhetoric, as his discriminative 
judgment tipon the true republican grounds of indi- 
vidual success. He said : 

"Mr. Upham was emphatically the artificer of his 
"own fortunes. He owed nothing to the factitious 
"circumstances of wealth or patronage. He rose to 
"his high position by his own energies, his own unaided 
"efibrts; thus furnishing another and beautiful illtis- 
"tration of the operation of the genius of our institu- 
"tions, in that they open the pathway to station and 
"honor alike to all; and no favorites are recognized, 
"other than the votaries at the shrine of justice, of 
"honor, and of patriotism." 



of Solomon Foot. 19 

From this time forward lie began to engage more 
prominently in the aftairs of the Senate, carrying, in 
1851, bills for the erection of the Custom-House at 
Burlington, and the Conrt-Houses at Windsor and 
Rutland, as well as for the most useful and philan- 
thropic object of providing a grant of ten million acres 
of the pubhc lands for asylums for the indigent insane. 
This last measure met the fate, which in late years too 
often overtakes acts in aid of the suffering and down- 
trodden. It was vetoed by President Pierce. 

Reviewing the veto message, in a speech on the 
third of May, 1851:, he said, with a most just apprecia- 
tion of the true constitutional office of the executive 
veto : 



*"' So far as the simple question of the policy or 
^'expediency of a measure is concerned, it belongs 
" properly — I will not say exclusively — to the legisla- 
^* tive department ; that, except in rare and peculiar 
" cases, it furnishes no justifiable consideration for the 
" interposition of the negative power of the executive. 
"The exercise of this remnant of despotic power 
" ought rarely to be resorted to, and then only in cases 
■• of hasty and inconsiderate legislation, and in cases 
" of flagrant and palpable injustice, and in cases of 
" manifest infraction of the constitution." 



During the second session of the thirty-third 
Congress he served on the committee on Public 
Lands, Pensions, and Contingent Expenses ; and he 
exerted himself with his usual vigor to j^i'ocure 
legislation needful for his constituents. 

On the bill, providing for an improvement of the 
breakwater at Burlington, his speech had more than a 



20 Life, Character ayid Services 

local bearing, as it rested upon those broad and 
benificent principles of political economy relating to 
internal improvements, out of which, in one form or 
anothei*, although always, until lately, opposed by the 
democratic party, has grown much of the material 
prosperity, and consolidated unity of the people of 
the free states. 

In the same session, ho urged upon Congress the 
justice and propriety of providing a bounty to the 
volunteers in the war of 1812, basing his argument 
upon the same principles which have given to the 
heroic citizen soldiery, who, in the late war of the 
rebellion, gave up, with enthusiastic patriotism and 
alacrity, the occupations of peace, and the endear- 
ments of home and family, to assert, with their 
manhood and their lives, the indivisible nationality of 
the government, some slight tokens of the gratitude 
of that government which they have saved and 
redeemed to its original theory of justice, liberty and 
equal rights. In the course of his remarks, on moving 
an amendment to the regular bounty bill, providing 
for the Plattsburgh volunteers, he said : 

"It (the original bill) excludes those volunteers 
" who have rushed to the rescue of the country at the 
"time of pressing emergency and impending danger, 
" as did the volunteers at the battle of Plattsburgh. 
" The farmers left their harvest in the field; all classes 
'^ of people left their employment and their homes, and 
" went to the scene of danger and of conflict, * '^ ^' 
" and the victory was won, and the fortunes of that 
" day were saved to the country by those very volun- 
" teers. These volunteers rendered quite as signal and 
" important service to the country, as many a regular, 
" who has been paid by the United States." 



of Solomon Foot. 21 

Tn the thirty-fourth Congress, he again pressed the 
ehiims of the vohmteers in the war of 1812; and, 
with signal abiUty, he maintained the right of a gallant 
officer, a son of Vermont, (Gen. B. S. Koberts,) to the 
honor of first planting the Amei'ican flag upon the 
batteries of the Garita, and upon the citadel of 
Mexico. lie said, what is as true now of the soldier 
who inade sacrifices and gained glory in recent battle- 
fields, as it was then: 

"But, sir, his professional re])utation belongs not to 
Miimself alone; it belongs not to his family alone; it 
'belongs to the country, and emphatically to the 

■ State which gave him his birth and his education, 
' and is, in a measure, committed to the keeping of 
"^ the representatives from that State. Vermont, sir, 
' shed too much blood uj^on the battle-fields of jMexico ; 
Hoo many of her youthful sons were left upon its 
* plains, and among its mountain passes, to allow her 
"^to be unmindful of the reputation of those who 

■ survive. She made a costly sacrifice to tlie spirit of 
"^ that war, when her gallant and accomplished Kansom 

' fell before the walls of Chepultepec. It shall not be < 
' laid to my charge if she makes a greater sacrifice by 

■ neglecting to vindicate the well-earned reputation of 
'^ any of her surviving sons." 

In the spring of 185G came on the Kansas question, 
which m^irked another era in tlie swift progress of 
events towards the great maelstrom of rebellion. I 
am informed by Senator Pomeroy, of that State, that 
Mr. Foot engaged actively in that contest on the side 
of freedom, and that he rendered most efficient aid in 
the admission of the young State, with a free consti- 
tution, but I do not find in the Congressional debates 
any speeches of his on that subject reported. 



22 Life, Character and Services 

In the same Congress he participated effectively in 
the debates on the Central American question, oppo- 
sing the claims of Great Britain to the Mosquito 
Territory, and insisted upon her leaving that country 
and giving up her protectorate over it, with a vigor 
and pertinacity that the present administratian, it is 
to be hoped, will imitate in respect to the French in 
Mexico. 

In the thirty-fifth Congress he served on the 
Committee on Foreign Relations. He advocated the 
construction, by government aid, of a railroad to the 
Pacific coast, on the route of Gov. Stevens' survey, 
now known as the northern route; and he opposed 
the project then advanced for the acquisition of Cuba; 
and in a speech equal, I think, to any of his efforts, 
defended the conduct of Commodore Paulding in the 
arrest of the fillibuster, William Walker. 

In the thirty-sixth Congress he was a membei- of 
the Committee on Claims, and his name is connected 
with much routine legislation. 

In the thirty-seventh Congress, which assembled 
July 4th, 1861, in special session, on account of the 
rebellion, he served on the very important Committee 
on JSTaval Affairs, with Hale, Grimes and Sherman, 
and was also Chairman of the Committee on Public 
Buildings, but having on the nineteenth of July bee'x 
unanimously elected President of the Senate, ^9ro 
tem/pore, his labors were necessarily devoted to the 
highly responsible duties of that office, although he 
devoted much time to the business of the Committee 
on Public Buildings, of which he continued to be 
Chairman until his death. 



of Solomon Foot. 23 

At the third session of the thirty-seventh Congress, 
he was again unanimously elected to preside in the 
Senate. And in the discharge of the duties of the 
CJiair, he displayed a dignity, promptness, urbanity 
and ability, which have seldom been equalled, and never 
excelled. 

In this and the succeeding Congresses until he died, 
although he did not enter much into debate, his name 
is connected in the proceedings with many of the 
leading measures made necessary by the rebellion, 
and almost always on the side of the majority, although, 
with the true sjDirit of a Yermonter and an honest 
man, he did not fear or hesitate, when he thought an 
administration measure to be clearly wrong, to oppose 
it, and vote against it, as in the case of the legal 
tender act, and some others. 

Among his last speeches in the Senate was one 
delivered on the 12th day of January, 1865, in favor 
of terminating the Keciprocity Treaty with Great 
Britain. It was brief, but cogent and forcible, aiid 
had, as I am told, much effect in the abrogation of the 
Treaty. 

Aside from his senatorial duties he was a prominent 
delegate to the Union Republican Convention of 1864, 
which re-nominated Mr. Lincoln, and nominated Mr. 
Johnson for the Yice Presidency, and he was an 
ardent advocate of the latter to succeed Mr. Hamlin. 
It was one of the few serious mistakes of his lifetime, 
but he lived long enough to regret it. Early in 
March, 1866, when confined to his house by the illness 
which resulted in his death, and when many still hoped 
that the President would yet prove his fidelity to the 



24 Life, Character and Services 

principles upon which he was elected, as declared and 
expounded by his own lips, Mr. Foot said to a friend 
who had called to see him : 

" There is nothing to l3e hoped for from the Presi- 
"dent; he has deserted his principles, and tiu'ned his 
"back upon the only men to whom he owed an}^ 
"gratitude, and has relapsed into the arms of the 
" party which has opposed the Government throughout 
"the war. The only safety of the nation is in the 
" Senate and House of Representatives. Even out of 
"this gloomy period of discouragement, as great as 
" any since the war began, if they stand firm, we shall 
" come purified and victorious. But I am depressed 
" by it more than I can tell you." 



He never again entered the Senate Chamber, where 
he had so long and well labored and presided, until 
his body was borne thither by his associates, to receive 
the last sad honors due to his pure and useful life, and 
his exalted station. 

On the 28th day of March, 1866, after a service of 
fifteen years in the Senate, he died, surrounded by his 
relatives and friends, and sustained and soothed by 
all the consolations of religion. 

There are many passages of his life worthy of 
commemoration, which the time properly devoted to 
notices of this character does not allow me to refer to. 
It has been my purpose rather to bring to your 
attention the leading events of his life, and of the 
times in which he bore a part, so that "the hour and 
the man" might, as they fitly shonld, reciprocally 
illustrate each other. 



of Solomon Foot. 25 

A living French writer, profoundly versed in the 
philosophy of politics, and remarkable (Avhen it so 
pleases him,) for the clearness of his ideas, says: 
"Historic truth ought to be no less sacred than 
" religion. If the precepts of faith raise our souls above 
" the interests of this world, the lessons of history in 
" their turn inspire us with the love of the beautiful and 
" the just, and the hatred of whatever presents an 
" obstacle to the progress of humanity. These lessons, 
"to be profitable, require certain conditions. It is 
" necessary that the facts be produced with rigorous 
" exactness, that the changes, political or social, be 
" analyzed philosophically, that the exciting interest of 
" the details of the lives of public men should not divert 
" attention from the political part they played, or cause 
" us to forget their providential mission." 

Guided by these evident truths, it remains to estimate 
with critical justness, no less than with affectionate 
remembrance, the character and career of Mr. Foot. 
For our duties now are historic purely. The solemn 
and imposing pageant of the burial is past. The 
voices of Divines, and Senators, and Representatives, 
have been heard in eulogies such as can be bestowed 
only upon fcAV men. He now takes his place in 
history, among the heroes and worthies who have 
been the creators of history, and surrounded with an 
array of great events, profoundly significant of the 
progress of the human race. 

" In the birth of societies," says Montesquieu, " it is 
" the chiefs of the republics who form the institutions, 
" and in the sequel it is the institutions which form the 
" chiefs of the republic." 

4 



^6 Life, Character and Services 

Mr. Foot, I think, occupied a middle place among 
such chiefs. He was not in the high, grand sense, a 
leader or chief, nor was he on the other hand (as many 
men in high stations are,) the mere creature of cir- 
cumstance, floating upon the tide of public ajQPairs. 

He had not those indescribable resources of character 
to which we give the name of genius. But he was 
free, too, from those impracticable fancies which 
frequently deprive genius of all its utility. He had 
none of that truckling subserviency which will some- 
times barter a permanent good for a temporary 
triumph. He never sold the truth to save the hour. 

But, to a plain, strong intellect, he added the 
improvements of considerable learning, of cultivation, 
of discipline, and a constant and industrious aim at 
excellence in all his acts. With a purity of heart and 
sweetness and generosity of disposition, as charming 
as it is rare, he entered ix^on the performance of all 
his duties, whether of friendship, in his profession, or 
of State, with a vigorous and hearty good will that 
was a sure and just guaranty of success and popularity. 
He did not initiate revolutions or reforms, but in the 
shuflBling scenes of the drama of life he was always in 
his proper place, and he always performed his part, 
and never overacted. 



" When workmen strive to do better than well, 
They do confound their skill in covetoiisness." 



This he did not do, but he did not fail in all his life 
of varied employment, school-boy, student, teacher, 
lawyer, legislator, to reach and maintain a high 



of Solomon Foot. 21 

standard of excellence ; and he justly excited, by these 
qualities of mind and heart, and by his unblemished 
private life, the affectionate admiration and esteem of 
all classes of people. And thus he passes into history 
Avith the loving remembrance of his friends, of his 
State, and of his country, who will associate his 
worthy name with all the amenities of intercourse, and 
with the onward progress of the great events of his 
time. 

In his allotted j^lace, he makes up one of the great 
com23any of men, whose lives have been bright 
examples for our admiration and imitation. We trace 
the history of the farmer's boy, or the mechanic's son, 
up the rugged steep of fortune, and rejoice over the 
course (our country's republican glory,) of the poor 
doctor's self-reliant son, working his way alone to the 
height of civil greatness, — teaching the valuable 
lesson, fraught with courage and constancy to every 
calling, that neither humbleness of birth, nor absence 
of fortune, nor distance of opportunity, is sufficient to 
eurl3 the expanding force of talent and persisting 
industry, armed and purified by virtue. But, as the 
high counsel 

" Tm ne cede malis sed contra midentior ito,^'' 

could be addressed to the true mariner only, it is the 
brave and patient alone who can profit by such 
examples. 



28 Life, Character & Services of Solomon Foot. 



:NroTE 

To the statement on jyage tiventy-three, as to the nom- 
ination of Vice President Johnson. 

This statement, the writer has since learned, is not 
perfectly correct. Mr. Foot, in a conversation with 
the writer, prior to the convention, was understood to 
state that he was in favor of the nomination of Mr. 
Johnson. But it appears from the statements of 
Hons. E. P. Walton and A. B. Gardner, who were 
members of the convention, that Mr. Foot voted first 
for Mr. Hamlin, and would have voted next for Mr. 
Dickinson, had not the general current so set towards 
Mr. Johnson as to make it useless. 



JOI^ASGALUSHA: THE FIFTH GOYEENOK 
OF YERMO:XT. 



BY REV. PLINY Ho' WHITE. 



The Galusha Family' is one of the oldest in Xew 
England. Early in the seventeenth century, Jacob 
Galusha, when about eight years old, was abducted 
from Wales by persons interested in an estate to 
which he was likely to become an heir. He was sent 
to Xew England, settled near Plymouth, Mass., and 
became the ancestor of a numerous lamily. He Iiad 
two sons, Jacob and Daniel. Daniel, the younger ol' 
them, had three sons, Jacob, Daniel and Jonas, 
Jacob married Lydia Huntington, daughter of Matthew 
Huntington of Preston, Ct., and a relative of Gov. 
Samuel Huntington. He was a iarmer and black- 
smith, in moderate ch-cumstances, but of imblemished 
character, sound judgment, and much native shrewd- 
ness. They had five sons, the third of whom, fJonas, 
afterwards governor of Vermont, was born in INorwicli, 
Ct. 11 February 1753.* When he was less than three 

* Jacob Galusha had four wives. By the first. Lydia Iluutinjrton, lie had five sons, David, 
Jacob. Jonas, Amos, and Elijah: an<l four dauffhters, llary. Ulivc. Lydia. and Anne. ]{y the 
second, Tlianklul Kiufr. lir liad one daiifrlitcr, l.iu-y. iiy the third. Desire (Andnis) .Metc.iir. he 
had tour suns, Daniel, Henjaiiiin, Kzra, and i:iias: and two daughters. 1). ,-iir and Sally. Hy hi.s 
I'ourth wile, Ahigail FustiT, hr liait no children. She was a woman oi' jri cal .-ti<'n;.nli and 
longevity. In lier SOtli year slie was liaptizeil liy immersion and joined the llaiitisl Clnneli in 
Shttltsbury, Vt., and wlien ninety years old, she rode in a waftou fitly miles in a day with no 
serious iuconveuieuco. With reference to the temper and disposition of his four wives, Mr. 
Galusha remarked, in his shrewd wav:— " I have been tiviee in heaven, once on earth, and once 
iuhell." 



'^0 Jonas Galusha: 

years old, he fell into a .small pond of water, near 
which he, with his brothers and sisters, had been 
playing, and remained in the Avater till his sister Mary 
ran a quarter of a mile and called the father, who 
came, rescued him from the water, and succeeded in 
restoring him. 

In 1769, Jacob Galusha and his family removed to 
Salisbury, Ct., and thence in the spring of 1775, to 
Shaftsbury, Vt. * JSTone of his sons had received 
any education, except the very limited one that was 
afforded by the common schools of that period; but 
their strength of mind and energ}^ of character soon 
made them leading men in the town, and to some 
extent in the State. David, the eldest of the brothers, 
was the representative of Shaftsbury in 1779. Jacob, 
the second, was elected town clerk in 1784, and held 
the office forty-one years. He was also justice of 
the peace for a long term, and the representative of 
Shaftsbury, for ten consecutive years, 1801-1811. f 
Amos, the fourth, served in the revolutionary army, 
and, during the administrations of Jefferson and 
Madison, i-endered them very efficient support by his 
contributions to the periodical press. J 

Soon after his removal to Shaftsbur} , Jonas Galusha 
set up a shop for making nails, and also carried on a 
farm for his brother David. He became at length a 
farmer o'n his own account, and pursued that employ- 
ment through life, except as he was withdrawn from 
it by official engagements. Possessing a strong 

* It is vrortliy of remark, that several of tlic most distinguished early families of Vermont, 
includinsr, besides the Galushas, the Aliens, Cliipniaus, :ind Chitteudeiis, were emigrants from 
Salisliurv. ■ 

tile was li.irnSJanuary 1751, and died 25 July 1834. 

jHc diiil about 1S40. Elijah, the youngest brother, married Beulah, daughter of Governor 
Thomas Chittenden, but lost his life ■witliin a year or two by an aceidental injury in a sawmill at 
Arlington, lie left one son. His widow married Col. Matthew Lyon. 



Fifth Governor of Vermont. 31 

constitution and vigorous physical powers, he was 
able, even to advanced age, to do the full work of a 
man, with hoe, scythe, sickle, or axe, and never 
required any of his laborers to go beyond what he 
himself did. Notwithstanding his constant employ- 
ment on the form, he found oiiportunity to add to his 
stock of knowledge by reading, and to cultivate 
practical wisdom by observation and reflection. 

When the revolutionary struggle commenced, he 
took an active part in favor of the independence of 
the colonies. He was a member of a company, com- 
manded by his brother David, in Col. Seth Warner's 
i-egiment of Green Mountain Boys, and did service in 
Canada in the fall of 1775. Prior to the battle of 
Bennington, 16 August 1777, two companies of militia 
had been organized in Shaftslniry, one of them under 
his captaincy, the other under that of Amos Hunting- 
ton ; but Captain Huntington being taken prisoner at 
Ticonderoga, the two companies were consolidated 
under Capt. Galusha. When he received orders from 
Col. Moses Kobinson to march his company to Ben- 
nington, he was sick in bed, recovering from a fever, 
but he promptly called out his men and led them to 
the scene of action. 

On the day of the battle, his company had occasion, 
on account of a bend in the Walloomsac liiver, to 
ford the river twice, on their way to attack Baum's 
rear. He was so weak that, at the first crossing, a 
soldier insisted upon carrying him over, but excite- 
ment gave him such strength that he crossed the 
second ford without assistance, and was- in the hottest 
of the battle during the rest of the day. After Baum 



32 Jonas Galusha: 

was defeated, and the victors were resting from their 
fatigue, or were scattered about the field, gathering 
up the spoils, Burgo^'ne came up Avith reinforcements, 
and the Green Mountain Boys were compelled to fight 
and win the battle a second time. During this second 
struggle, he was brought within easy range of one of 
Burgoyne's pieces of artillery, from which two heavy 
charges of grape-shot were sent all around him, fur- 
rowing the ground at his feet, and cutting the bushes 
at each side of him and over his head, but leaving him 
luiscathed. "* He continued in active military service 
till the surrender of Burgoyne, on which occasion he 
was present at the head of his company; and at 
several other times he, with his company, was under 
arms for a fcAV days or weeks, as approaching danger 
might require. 

In October 1778, when not quite twenty-six years 
old, he married Mary Chittenden, daughter of Gov. 
Thomas Chittenden, by whom he had five sons and 
tour daughters, f 

In March 1781 he Avas elected Sheriff of the County 
of Bennington. The duties of the office at that early 
period of the history of Vermont were onerous and" 
perplexing to the very last degree. The great mass 
of the people were extremely poor and deeply in debt, 

* In this battle, the life of one of Galusha's men was preserved in a somowliat remarkable 
liiaimer. He came in contact vrith a tory, Willi wliom lie bad previously been ac(iiiainted, and a 
liund-to-band coullict enMud. in v.bicli tiie tory .sticeoeded in tlin^win;; liini to tlie earth, and was 
just abi.ut 111 iiiJlict a fatal wound, .lust at that moment a Hessian soldier came niuinnjj towards 
llieui, and, in his liastc, niistJikins' the character of the comlialants, run the tory tln-oufrh willi 
his bayonet and released till' whij<. Much to the, Hessian's surprise, lie sot)n found himself a 
prisoner to the man whose life he had i)reserved. 

t Slie was born in 1758 and died 20 April 1794. Their childreu were, I.Clarissa, b. 9 Sept 
I7<S, m. Dr. Daniel Huntington, d. May 1823. —2. Mary, b. 23 May 1782, m. Korman 
Hinsdill, d. 31 May 1827 — 3. Jonas, b. 17 July 1783, m. Electa Hinsdill, d. 2 June ISill.— 
4. Nancv, b. 28 December 1784, m. Asa Hillings of Kovaltou, d. IG October 1848. — 6. Truman, 
b. 30 .Septeuilicr 178(;, m. 1st. 17 Sept. ISiCt, J.ydia Loomis, (d. 27 June 1818,) and 2d., 23 Dec. 18l:i. 
Hannah Chittenden, a daiiKliter of Xoali <liiltenden and grand-daujrhter of Gov. Thomas Chit- 
tenden. !^he died -!i May isL'S. Ky the lirst « ile he had two sons and one daughter, and by the 
secoiKl, onr son and tliree (Uiugbtcrs. In 1823 he removed to Jericho, and became and contin- 
ued to 1)0 a leadhiK man in lb(t tov. u and county. He was the representative of Jericho in the 
(Jcuieral Assembly in 1.S-J7, ]s2S, and 1830, a member of the Constilutioual Convention in 183(! and 
1813, and a Judge of Chittenden County Court in 1849 and 1860. He was once a candidate for Con- 



Fifth Oovernor of Vermont. 33 

and their unfortunate condition was greatly aggravated 
by the want of a cash market for their produce, and 
by the depreciation of the currency which took place 
at the close of the Revolutionary War. The laws, too, 
for the collection of debts v*^ere very severe, not only 
subjecting all the debtor's property, except the barest 
necessaries, to attachment and execution, but making 
his person liable to imprisonment, with no possibility 
of release but by paying the debt. ^'' The criminal laws 
were also cruel and inhuman. Among the punish- 
ments which they authorized Avere, whipping, setting 
in the stocks, cutting off the ears, and branding Vv^itli 
a red-hot iron, t There is still extant in the Secretary 
of State's office, an account of Jonas Galusha against 
the State, to the amount of £10, 4:S. 6d. for executing 
the sentence of the Supreme Court upon Abel Geer, 
b}^ cutting off his right ear and branding him upon the 
forehead with the letter C. 

Besides these things, of themselves sufficient to 
make the office of sheriff disagreeable to a man of 
ordinary sensibilities, there were at that time politi- 
cal disturbances which greatly increased the labors and 
responsibilities of the office, and made it still more 
irksome. The State had been organized only a shoi-t 
time, and opposition to its authority was still made in 

gress, hut just before tlie election he declined in favor of another caudi(hitc. He died 12 June 1859. 
ti. Klon. b. IS June ITliO, m. Betsey Buttmu. In ISll and IS12 he studied law with Hon. Itichard 
Skinner, luit. heconiing a Christian, he turned his attention to the stud.v of Tiieolo^y, became a 
Baptist luiiiistcr, and was soon known as an <'lofiuent anil elFective preacher. His first settle- 
ment was in \Vidlesl)oro. X. Y.. iu l.s;<;, and he (.Mutiiiued ther(^ sixteen years. Diirinpr a part, 
of tliaf lime he was a;;ent I'm- <'.iluiiiljia Collcjce. 1). ('.. ami hail t-'rcat .-Mcrc'^N in raising funds for 
it. Hi' w;is aiuDiin tlie most active of the fuuiidersof n:liulltiiM Tlieolii.i:i«':il Seinjiiary, and.spi'iit 
about a vcar in its service at tlie Ihiie of its greatest eiulian:i.-snivMt. In IS-J:; lie Ix'ciime i>a~.|or 
of the Ilniail street Kaiitist Ouirrh in Uliea. went thence to Kuchesti-r, and at a later |)eriod 
was for several > cars pastor in Terry. In 1810 he visited Enjrland hi '>e!i:ilf of a iihilanthropic 
enterprise hi wliicli he was interesteil. In 1>)41 he hccaine pastor in Lockport, and continued 
there till his dialh. II January lis ii>. He was a man of line pulpit lali'iits, of j/entlemanly man- 
ners, of an eminently benevolent spirit, and of disliii;.'iiislied usefulness in liis denomination. 
His remarkable success in procurim; donations ior nations and chiiiitalile purposes Kaiiu d 
for him the sobriquet — "King of Beggars." — 7. Martin, l>. IS January 17U2, m. 20 September 
)81-"i, Almlra CobI), removed to the State of New York in 1818, and is still living iu Ilochester. — 
8. Sopliia, b. January ITlM, d. lt> April IVii. — S). Jonas, who died luinfaucy. ■ 

* Slade'8 State Papers, p. 320, 302, 45S. 
t lb. p. sa. 



34 Jonas Gakisha: 

some places, particnlarly in the South part of Wind- 
ham County, where an active and stubborn, if not 
numerous party upheld the jurisdiction of ISTew York. 
Conciliatory measures having failed to bring these 
men to submission, a coercive policy was adopted. 
Several of the leaders were arrested, tried by the 
vSuj^reme Court, and banished from the State, under 
penalty of death if they returned. One of these had 
accepted from Gov. Clinton of I*s^ew York a commis- 
sion as Sheriff of Cumberland County, and two others 
had accepted commissions as Colonel and Lt. Colonel 
of an imaginary regiment of militia in the same County. 
After their banishment, they were encouraged by Gov. 
Clinton, with promises of support and military protect- 
ion, to return to Vermont, defy its authority, and 
attempt to overthrow its government. From time to 
time, as they made themselves obnoxious, they were 
arrested, and committed to jail in Bennington; and 
during most of the year 1783 and a part of 1784, one 
or more of them was almost continually in jail. They 
Avere allowed the free use of their pens, and used them 
freely in letters and newspaper articles defaming the 
sheriff, jailer, and all other Vermont officials, and 
laboring to excite popular sympathy in their own 
favor. 

It was not a little to Mr. Galusha's credit that, in 
the midst of peculiar trials and responsibilities, he so 
acquitted himself in the Sheriff's office as to command 
the confidence of the government and people, and to 
retain the office till he parted with it by voluntary 
resignation. There was in his character a blending of 
the energetic with the urbane, by which he commended 



Fifth Governor of Vermont. 35 

himself to all with whom he had oflB.cial intercom'se. 
He had an instinctive knowledge of human nature, and 
so great skill in managing men that he rarely failed 
of bringing the most refractory to his own terms. On 
one occasion when he went to serve a process, 
the respondent seized an axe, and swore he would 
take the sheriff's life sooner than be arrested. Mr. 
Gralusha was unarmed, except with a slender stick, but 
assured the man that he would teach him better than 
to threaten his life, and would have him in irons in 
less than an hour. Partly by reasoning and partly by 
jesting, he talked the axe out of the man's hand, and 
accomplished the arrest v\dthin the time limited. On 
another occasion, the respondent armed himself with 
a walnut club, and backed into a corner of the room, 
declaring that he Avould not be taken. " Yes, you 
will," replied Galusha, "but I'm in no hurry.'" "JSTo, " 
was the quick response, "I will not be taken alive." 
''Then," said Galusha, ''you need to be better armed 
than with a club. I will give you a chance to get your 
gun and bayonet, and then I'll take you; but I'm sorry 
to say that I've nothing but a smnmons to take you 
with." The man, ashamed of having made such a 
demonstration against a harmless writ of summons, 
speedily threw down his weapon and submitted to the 
process. One of the last of his ofS.cial acts was the 
dis23ersal of a party of "Shay's men," who, upon the 
suppression of Shay's rebellion in Massachussets, fled 
to Vermont early in 1787, and called a meeting at 
Shaftsbury, for the jxirpose of setting on foot a similar 
movement in this State. Mr. Galusha, in company 
with Gideon Olin, and other prominent citizens, attend- 



S6 Jonas Galuslia: 

ed the meeting, warned them of the danger to Avhich 
they were exposing themselves by their illegal pro- 
ceedings, and notified them to quit the town forthwith. 
In the spring of 1787, he resigned the office, having 
held it six years. 

He was not again in pnblic life till 1792, when he was 
elected a member of the second Council of Censors, the 
first that met after the admission of Vermont into the 
Union. This body proposed several material changes 
in the Constitution, among which were the establish- 
ment of a Senate, and of an advisory Council of four, 
and the limitation of the right of rejDresentation to 
towns having not less than forty families. He used 
all his influence in favor of these propositions, both in 
the Council and with the people, but none of them 
secured the popular assent. In 1793 he was elected 
a member of the Governor's Council, a body of twelve 
men, clothed with powers which rendered it nearly 
equivalent to a co-ordinate branch of the legislature. 
By successive elections, he lield this office six years, 
1793-98. In the mean time, his wife had died, and he 
had married, as his second wife, Patty Sammons, 
daughter of Timothy Sammons of Huntington, L. I. * 

In 1795 he was elected an assistant Judge of Ben- 
nington County Court, and held the office three years. 
The legislature of 1798, which met at Yergennes, was 
strongly federal in politics, and as that jiarty had not 
been in power for many years, its appetite for office 
had become ravenous in the extreme. Democratic of- 
ficeholders were removed and their places supplied with 



*She Tvas boru iu 1764, and died, childless, 10 November 1797. Her death was thus noticed iu a 
cotemporary newspaper,— " In Sliaftsbury, Nov. 10, 1797, Mrs. Patty (ralusha. the amiable con- 
sort of Jonas Galusha." 



Fifth Governor of Vermont. 37 

federalists, with such an unsparing' hand, that the 
place, where the sessions of this body Avere held, was 
long known by the name of " the Vergennes slaughter- 
house." Mr. Galusha was one of the victims, l)ut 
when his party regained the ascendency in 1800, he 
was restored to the judgeship, and remained in the 
office seven years, 1800-06. Having been a frequent 
attendant upon the sessions of the legislature, he was 
asked why he never came as representative. " Because 
the freemen do not advise me to," w^as liis reply. In 
1800, however, the freemen of Shaftsbury gave him 
that advice, and he took his seat in the House of 
Kepresentatives, but on the morning of the second 
day he resigned his seat, informing the House that he 
had been elected a Councillor, and had accepted the 
office. He remained a member of the Council seven 
successive years, 1800-06. 

He was elected a Judge of the Supreme Court in 
1807* and again in 1808. This Avas perhaj^s the 
highest tribute that could have been paid to his sound 
judgment and incorruptible integrity, for he had none 
of the legal learning usually regarded as an indisjien- 
sable qualification for that office. His associates on 
the bench were Judges Tyler and Harrington, both of 
them remarkable men; the former for his classical 
learning, high literary culture, ready wit, and prolific 
authorship; the latter for his prodigious native 
powers of mind and his entire lack of cultivation. 
Judge Galusha occupied a position between the tw^o, 
having neither the polish of Tyler, nor the sti*eugth 
of Harrington, but a practical common sense which 
made him as useful and acceptable a judge as either 

6 



38 Jonas GalusJia: 

of them. He was on the bench during the celebrated 
trial of the crew of the " Black Snake," a smuggling 
vessel on Lake Champlain, whose crew had an afiray 
with a party of revenue officers, and Idlled two of 
them; and he charged the jury in that case. In 1807, 
he Avas elected, on the part of the Council, United 
States Senator for the unexpired term of Israel Smith, 
but he failed to receive the concurrent vote of the 
House of Kepresentatives. 

His third wife, whom he married in June 1808, died 
in 1809.^ The same year he was chosen an Elector 
of President and Vice President, and with his col- 
leagues, gave the vote of Vermont to James Madison. 
He was chosen an Elector in 1821, and voted for 
James Monroe ; and in 1825 and 1829, when he voted 
for John Quincy Adams. The popularity of Isaac 
Tichenor, who had been governor for eleven years, 
made it expedient for the republicans to nominate as 
his opposing candidate in 1809 the man who enjoyed 
the largest measure of confidence, and could command 
the greatest number of votes. That man was Jonas 
Galusha, and with him as their leader the republican 
party was successful in that campaign. He was re- 
elected in 1810, 1811, and 1812. In his sijeeeh to the 
legislature in 1812, he urged the adoption of measures 
co-operating with the general government in carrying 
on the war with Great Britain, as well as providing for 
the defence of Vermont against possible invasion 
from Canada. His recommendations were adopted, 

* Her name was Abigail Ward, b. 1770, d. 6 May 1800. She had one child, Abigail, b. 15 April 



Fifth Governor of Vermont. 39 

and the requisite laws were enacted, but they were so 
oppressive in their practical operation, that many of 
the people went over to the federal party. At the 
election in 1813, he had a large plurality of the votes, 
but not a majority. The majority of the returned 
members of the legislature, upon which the election 
was thus devolved, were republicans, there being four 
federal majority in the House, and ten republican 
majority in the Council. But the federal leaders were 
shrewd and not over-scrupulous, and, finding that by 
rejecting the entire vote of Colchester for councillors, 
upon the pretence that a large number of votes had 
been polled illegally by United States soldiers station- 
ed there, three more federal councillors would be 
elected and the Joint Assemby brought to a tie, they 
decided to do so, and the federal majority in the 
House carried out their purposes in that regard. The 
Joint Assembly balloted a number of times every day 
for more than a week without eftecting a choice, till 
at length, on the 21st day of October, the votes were 
declared to be one hundred and twelve for Martin 
Chittenden, and one hundred and eleven for Jonas 
Galusha. The one hundred and twelve republican 
members immediately signed a certificate that they 
did, each of them, on that bollot, vote for Jonas 
Galusha, and claimed that the apparent result should 
be set aside and another ballot be taken. But the 
federal majority in the House refused to take any 
further action, and Martin Chittenden was declared 
Governor. There is good reason to believe that the 
result of the ballot was correctly declared, only 
one hundred and eleven persons in fact voting for 



40 Jonas Galusha • 

Galusha, and Oliver Ingham of Canaan having with- 
held his vote. By what means he was induced to do 
so it is impossible now to ascertain. 

In 1814 Mr. Galusha was the delegate from Shafts- 
bury to the Constitutional Convention. After the 
restoration of peace Avith Great Britain, many of the 
causes which had agitated the people of Vermont 
ceased to exist, and the republican party regained their 
ascendency. Mr. Galusha continued to be their 
candida1:e for governor, and in 1815 he was elected by 
a handsome majority. His speech to the legislature 
judiciously avoided all topics that could rekindle the 
expiring embers of party spirit. He alluded in suitable 
terms to the close of war and the grateful return of 
peace, but employed himself mainly with the business 
of the State. He was re-elected, year by year, by 
constantly increasing majorities, till 1819, when his 
competing candidate had only a few more than a 
thousand votes. He then announced his determina- 
tion to remain no longer in public life, and in this he 
persisted, though urged to the contrary, not only by 
his political friends, but by many of the adverse party. 
The legislature adopted and presented an address, in 
which they said — "In discharging the duties of 
"councillor, judge, and governor, you have ever 
" merited and received the approbation of your fellow 
"citizens." He was earnestly requested to be a candi- 
date for the United States Senate, which had he been, 
his election was morally certain, but he rejected the 
honor, nor did he again ever hold of&ce, except that in 
1822, he was again a member of the Constitutional 
Convention, and the President of that body. A few 



Fifth Qovernor of Vermont. 41 

years before, he had mamecl his fourth wife, Mrs. 
Nabby (Atwater) Beach, '-^ and he now retired to 
private life, in which he enjoyed a serene and honored 
old age, till having nearly attained his eighty-second 
year, he died, 25 September 1834. f 

In person. Gov. Galusha Avas rather stoutly built, 
about five feet and nine inches in height, and at the 
same time of a -very active temperament, as Avas 
indicated by his light complexion, blue eyes, and light 
hair inclining to be sandy. His dress was the plain 
but neat dress of a respectable farmer, Avho had 
mingled much with his fellow men, and was neither 
ignorant nor unmindful of the requirements of society. 
In couA^ersation he Avas ready, though not copious, 
and he had a vein of humor which rendered him very 
agreeable socially. He was fond of domestic life, and 
singularly fortunate in his domestic relations. The 
four Avives Avhom he successively married Avere cheer- 
ful, amiable, and pious women, and he lived Avith them 
in harmony and hapjiiness. His children Avere Avell 
trained, and all of them Avho surviAX^d childhood 
became professors of religion, one of them an eminent 
minister in the Baptist denomination. 

Though not himself a member of any church, he 
was, in the estimation of those best competent to judge, 
a true Christian. He maintained family worship in 
all its forms, was known to observe i3rivate devotions, 
Avas an habitual attendant upon public Avorshij) and at 
social meetings, and frequently took an active part in 

* His inarriaisre was thus announced in one ol' the papers of that day:— "In Cavendish, Feb. 
24, 1»18, Jonas OaUisha, and Mrs. Nabby Beach, a lady of unblemished reputation, and posses- 
sing in an eminent dcfirec, those amiable female virtues, whose price is far above rubies." Slie 
was born 2 April 17G4, and died 30 July Lsal. 

t His fimeral sermon, whicli is still extant in manuscript, was preached bv the Rev. AVarham 
Wallcer, from 2 Sam . 3 ; 38. "Know ye not tliat there is a prince and a great "man fallen this day 
in Israel?" 



42 Jonas Galusha: 

the latter. In his daily life he was also such as a 
Christian should be, modest, gentle, amiable, upright, 
faithful to every obligation. He was the first Gover- 
nor of Vermont, who introduced the word Chkist 
into the date of his proclamations. When nearly 
seventy-nine years of age, he attended a "protracted 
meeting " at Manchester, and took an active part in its 
exercises; as the result of which, he. was aroused to a 
sense of the duty of making a public profession of 
religion, and announced his intention to do so, but was 
prevented from accomplishing his purpose by a stroke 
of paralysis which he experienced soon after, and from 
which he never recovered. During the protracted 
sickness which ensued, his cheerfulness, patience, 
resignation, and Christian conversation bore Avitness 
to the genuine piety that was in his soul. 

Integrity and impartiality were such marked traits 
in his character that he was not seldom chosen as an 
arbitrator even by his enemies. His forbearance was 
such that he never resented an injury, but endeavored 
by his words and actions to make his enemies his 
friends. Benevolence to the poor was another of his 
distinguishing characteristics. He made their wants 
his own, and relieved them accordingly. It was no 
unusual thing for him, when, in the discharge of his 
ofiicial duties as sheriff, he had been made the instru- 
ment of reducing a poor man to still deeper poverty, 
to furnish the unfortunate debtor the means of 
extricating himself from embarrassment. He also gave 
freely to various benevolent societies, and took an 
active part in their affairs. He was President of the 
Bennington County Colonization Society, and Bible 



Fifth Oovernor of Vermont. 43 

Society, and one of the Vice-Presidents of the 
Yermont Bible Society. When the temperance 
reformation had jn-oceeded as far as the total-absti- 
nence movement, he gave his inflnence and example 
in its favor, and though he was far advanced in years, 
and had, all his life-time, been accustomed to the 
moderate use of alcoholic liquors, he at once aban- 
doned the habit, though not without fear that the 
sudden change might affect him injuriously. 

He was painfully conscious of the deficiencies of 
his early education, and feelingly alluded to them in 
his first executive address. But his quick perception, 
his retentive memory, his sound judgment, his ready 
wit, and his prompt command of all his intellectual 
powers and resources, were qualities which stood him 
in better stead, and more amply fitted him for his 
various duties, than the best scholastic education could 
have done without them. He had a rich fund of 
anecdote, upon which he drew frequently and with 
great effect. He was not addicted to j^ublic speaking, 
but could, when occasion required, express himself 
clearly and forcibly. His executive addresses were 
short, rarely exceeding in length four printed octavo 
pages, and frequently not more than half or two thirds 
as long. In style they were quite unadorned, but 
concise and perspicuous. To the contrary, his procla- 
mations for Fasts and Thanksgivings were of imusual 
length; sometimes, indeed, nearly as long as his 
messages, indicating that he was more accustomed to 
thmking and writing upon religious subjects than 
upon political affairs. 



44 Jonas Galuslia. 

Politically he was a democrat of the Jeffersonian 
school, and it may shed some light upon the pedigree 
of modern parties, to notice, that, without any change 
of his political views, he voted successively for 
Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Adams. Though in 
office nearly all the time for forty years, he was not an 
office-seeker. Rather did office seek him, on account 
of his eminent fitness for it. He accepted it from a 
sense of duty rather than from choice, and while in it 
sought to secure the public good rather than his own. 
Perhaps Vermont has never had a governor more 
worthy of the eulogy which Fulke Greville pro- 
nounced upon Sir Henry Sidney : — " He was such a 
" governor as sought not to make an end of the State 
" for himself, but to plant his own ends in the pros- 
" perity of his country." 



the sources of i^ew-ein'glai^d civil- 

izatio:n^. 



BY REV. J. E. RANKEN", CHARLESTOWX, MASS. 



CoTJNTTRiES may be sliced up into distinct territories 
by the conqueror's SAVord, as is the fashion in Europe ; 
but, they cannot be thus constituted into nationahties. 
Like the pine or the oak, a true nationalty is a growth ; 
a thing not to be made by the re-adjustment of the 
pohtical bahmces, or the change of territorial land- 
marks, but by a slow process of development, to make 
itself. Plant the pine-cone and the acorn upon the 
sunny slope of some of your ow^n green hills, now so 
gorgeous in their glory, can you make the cone 
produce the oak, or the acorn the pine ? Can yon 
substitute the murmuring needles of the one, for the 
shapely and classic foliage of the other? ]!^o more 
can you change one nation into another; no more can 
you, out of given materials, manufacture a homogene- 
ous nation; — a nation, with a history, with institutions, 
with an ideal consistent with itself, and reproducing 
the same national characteristics, generation after 
generation. ISlo less than the oak and the pine, such 
a product, such an intellectual, social and political 

8 



50 The Sources of 

power is a growth. And it is a growth, not merely 
from the germ of the original seed; it is a growth 
which has drawn to itself, and fed upon, the elements 
of the soil in which it has been imbedded; a growth, 
which has topped itself out into a thousand lungs, to 
breathe in the atmosphere of heaven around it, which 
has lifted up a thousand open hands, to catch the 
sunlight and the rain from heaven above it, and 
which, shooting downward, has hardened, and strength- 
ened and entrenched itself against a thousand beating 
tempests in the earth beneath it. 

Humboldt says, that the current produced by the 
passage of the waters of the Orinoco, between the 
South American continent and the island of Trinidad, 
is so powerful, that ships with all their canvas 
spread, and with a westerly breeze in their favor, can 
scarcel}^ make their way against it; and that the 
presence of this mighty movement of waters convinced 
Columbus that he apjiroached a continent, since only 
a continent could be the nurse of such a river. Wide- 
spread over this country, as are American institutions, 
no thoughtful mind can doubt the shaping and con- 
trolling influence in them, of ISTew England Civiliza- 
Tioisr, wherever, and just in proportion as this civiliza- 
tion has been permitted to make itself felt. It is my 
present purpose, to indicate some of the sources of 
this civilization; for, if only the mountain-ranges and 
table-lands and plains of a continent are sufficient to 
produce the Orinoco, back of this all-pervading, 
ubiquitous ISTew England Civilization, there must be 
something worthy of our study. 



Neio JEJnglnnd Civilization. 51 

The first source of ]S"ew England Civilization, is 
manifestly [NTew England history. There are those 
who regard historical studies and pursuits Avith con- 
tempt. With them, a thing that is past, is done with. 
What care they, when or by whom a country was 
discovered, settled, cleared and civilized, provided 
these things have been accomplished sometime, and by 
some one? But, the truth is, the history of a nation 
must always exert a sovereign influence over its 
destiny. A name, a locality, an event of the past, 
may do more toward determining the character and 
tendency of the present, than all the most ambitious 
and princely spirits of a generation. Says Yinet, 
" Eminent men do one work, and their memory does' 
"another; often, indeed, the work of their memory is 
" the most durable and best." It is the province of 
history to embalm and transmit this memory, that it 
may have an opportunity to do its legitimate worTc. 

It is true, that the very deeds of the founders of 
States are, in themselves, immortal; have a direct 
work to do, even to the end of time. But, the influ- 
ence of many a public act is, in itself, temporary, 
while the influence of its memory never can be 
estimated. The discovery of America, by Columbus, 
was an event, the influence of which never will cease 
to be felt. That single resolute man, whose faith was 
the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence 
of things not seen, so put his hand to the helm of the 
world's progress, that it will never lose the impulse 
imparted. But, full of sublimity and tender interest, 
as is the history of this event, it does not live as a 
vital force in the memory of men, as many a lesser 



52 The Sources of 

one. A few discoverers, a few scientific men, may be 
inspired by it ; a few more may be comforted in their 
discouragements. The deed, and not the memor}^, 
does the greater work. The achievement, the opening 
of this vast continent to the enterprise and civiHzation 
of the old world, the linking of the old world and 
the new, in intercourse, in commerce, in nationalities, 
in history, and lately, almost in sj^ace, obliterating the 
very ocean that he crossed: this is what Columbus 
accomplished. He found a place, too, for the Great 
Republic of the future. This was his work. 

There were others who came to this continent a 
century and a half later, exiles for conscience' sake, 
from their native land, who founded this RejDublic, for 
which he had provided a place. I shall not be under- 
stood as speaking disparagingly of the work of 
Columbus, when I say, that in grandeur of moral 
resmts, this work was greater than his. The little 
ship from Delft-Haven, outweighed the Sj)anish fleet 
from Palos. It was given to him to open a new world, 
of whose vastness, whose beauty, whose richness of 
structure and imperial future, even he had little 
conception. It was permitted to them, to determine 
the institutions, social, civil and political, which should 
preponderate in this new world, to establish that type 
of civilization, which should unpress itself upon all 
future generations. If Coliunbus discovered a new 
world, if he opened up a pathway through the waters 
to its unknown shores, if he drew towards it the 
thoughts and the enterprise of the older nations of 
the earth; it was theirs, to enter into a successful 
competition with the various types of civilization that 



iVeiy England Civilization. 53 

appeared here, and to triumph over them all ; it was 
theirs, so far as institutions are concerned, to create 
a new world, the model of which they l)rought over in 
the cabin of the Mayflower; as adventurers noAV carry 
ready-made dwellings to California. 

They live in their deed: but they live also in their 
memory. The w^ake of their little vessel, winged by 
faith, will always be a pathway of light to the eyes of 
the future. It still stands anchored, no spectral ship, 
in Plymouth harbor. The pen of the historian and 
the poet, and the tongue of the eloquent, have never 
ceased, and Avill never cease, to do them honor, and to 
perpetuate their memory. That memory will live and 
do its w^ork to the end of time. A moral atmosphere 
goes forth from it, that every man born in Xew 
England must breathe. He may not like the Pilgrims ; 
he may invidiously intimate, that they had an eye to 
the cod-fisheries of the new world, as w^ell as to its 
natural temples ; a conclusion which might possibly be 
drawn a posteriori from the characteristics of some 
of their children. But, still, he Avill see that in their 
character and work which he will be compelled to 
honor, which will impress itself upon liis own spirit 
and inspire his life. He cannot stand upon that Poclv, 
once trodden by Carver and Brewster and Standish, 
fresh from the baptism of a whiter sea, without 
thanking God for such ancestors, and praying that he 
may not prove unworthy of them, or unfaithful to 
what they committed to the keeping of their children. 

And so of the events of the revolution. Can a 
citizen of New England escape the influence of such 
names and places as Lexington and Concord, as 



54 The Sources of 

Bennington and Saratoga? Can he walk among the 
rums of Ticonderoga, which, for her unnatural sister, 
the heroism of Vermonters wrested from the grasp 
of the foe, without recalling that stalwart figure, now 
immortalized in stone at the entrance of your own 
Capitol, of him, avIio once stood with uplifted sword, 
at the gate of that fortress, and demanded its 
surrender in the name of the Great Jehovah and the 
Continental Congress; two powers then joined to- 
gether, not now to be put asunder! Can he stand 
upon the remnants of the old entrenchment where 
Warren fell, and not see his noble daring, his longing, 
lingering look, at the field that was lost ? Ah ! these 
memories are the most precious heir-looms that !New 
Englanders have! Let suitable monuments mark 
such hallowed spots! Let the sculptor and the painter 
reproduce these historic personages, these attitudes, 
tliese deeds that can never die. Let the annals of the 
past be gathered np and treasured for oin* childi'en, 
as the best security of the future. New England 
civilization will thus continue to be the outgrowth of 
]N^ew England history. And, as we see the same 
features and characteristics repeating themselves 
here and there, in the development of individual 
families, so our Warrens and our Aliens will re-apj)ear 
in our Winthrops and our Stannards to the end of 
time. 

The second source of JN^ew England Civilization 
is JSTew England climate and soil. jfSTotwithstanding 
the rare original elements in it, JSTew England Civiliz- 
ation would have been possible, only upon ]N^ew Eug- 



Neiv England Civilization. 55 

land soil; only in IS'ew England latitude. If the seeds 
of this civilization had been planted in the rich loam 
of Yirginia, instead of the barren sands of Plymouth ; 
if they had found a more genial latitude and a more 
generous nurture ; escaping the long winters and east- 
erly storms, the sterile and rocky hills of ^ew England, 
the result would have been far different. We talk 
about overcoming the infelicities of climate, of subdu- 
ing nature to productiveness, as though the direct vic- 
tory were the great achievement; as though to make 
two blades of grass grow where one grew before, to 
double the bushels of wheat or corn or potatoes that 
an acre produces, to invent a mower or a reaper wdiicli 
shall do the work of a half-dozen men, to convert a 
neglected waterfall into a mill-site, or to make it give 
impulse to a thousand dashing shuttles or ten thous- 
sand whirring spindles, were the grand result of our 
efforts. There is a moral victory grander than this. 
The noblest result is the development of certain qual- 
ities in the victor. We triumph over the soil, the cli- 
mate, the natural disadvantages which we encounter. 
But, these infelicities as we call them, put us to tuition 
also. We develop the possibilities of aSTature. We 
none the less develop the j^ossibilities of our own na- 
ture. The valleys bearded with wheat, or bristling 
with corn, the hills covered with flocks and herds, the 
streamlets and rivers vocal with the hum of industry 
and thrift : these constitute one result of our encounter 
with nature. But there is an intellectual and moral 
result, Avhicli is for more valuable. Habits of thought, 
of industry, of self-reliance, of persistent endeavor are 
acquired in this school. I hesitate not to determine, 



56 The Sources of 

which is the most beautiful object of contemplation, the 
broad meadows or graceful hill-sides, with clustered 
maples, which, in your own Vermont, one man has 
spent a lifetime in reducing to beauty and fertility, 
or the character, which this constant struggle with ^NTa- 
ture and the elements has developed in himself; the 
calm and comprehensive judgment, the serene trust, 
the healthful sense of self-approval, and those other 
sturdy qualities so characteristic of the thorough yeo- 
men of ]^ew England. There is no truer hero, there 
is no truer sage, frequently there is no truer saint, 
than such a man. If, therefore, it was a haj)py thing 
for the destinies of this continent, that our ancestors 
were such men as they were, so loyal to truth and to 
God, so severe in the simplicity of their faith and their 
manners, it was no less happy that they landed upon 
the " stern and rock-bound coast" of ]!!^ew England; fit 
school for fit pupils. The rough sea having for long 
months rocked them upon her Spartan bosom, kindly 
brought them to their no less Spartan nursery of a fu- 
ture empire. 

This insensible, this reflex influence of climate, soil 
and scenery upon national character, is almost wholly 
ignored and J^eglected; in the choice of a residence, is 
so frequently counted for nothing. It is frequently 
said, in a half-sneering way, that ^New England is a 
good place to emigrate from. And so a man tears up 
from its native bed the roots of his household; leaves 
upon the hill-side the graves of his ancestors ; sunders 
the tie that binds himself and his children to the cloud- 
land, the sun-sets, the mountains and the lakes of his 
native region, and seeks a new home in the the ever- 



N'ew England Civilization. 57 

receding land of the West. Ah! the prairies may 
bloom ever so sweetly, their undulations may be ever 
so liquid and ocean-like as the breath of the Avind 
sweeps across their yielding- surface, the rivers may 
move their vast volumes ever so grandly to the Gulf, 
the cities and towns may spring up, as if by magic, 
around him, but all their ])hysical and material advan- 
tages shall be more than counterbalanced by what he 
has lost, by what he has done violence to, in the change. 
The sacrifice may be a matter of necessity or duty, but 
it is none the less a sacrifice, ^ew England is a good 
place to emigrate from, for it is a good place to give 
the founders of empires their preparatory training. 
Its mountains are good places from which to quarry 
out the corner or foundation-stones of States. But, 
such changes involve the loss of what can never be es- 
timated by money-standards, of what can never be re- 
placed by wealth and social influence. 

The language of natural scenery may not be easily 
translatable into words; but it has a meaning. It 
speaks directly to the soul. Says one of the most em- 
inent naturalists that ever lived : " That which the 
" painter designates by the exj^ressions ' Swiss scenery,' 
"or 'Italian sky,' is based on a vague feeling of the 
"local natural character. The azure of the sky, the ef- 
"fects of light and shade, the haze floating on the distant 
"horizon, the forms of animals, the succulence of plants, 
"the bright, glossy surface of the leaves, the outline of 
"mountains, all combine to produce the elements on 
"which depends the impression of any one region." 
The emigrant from New England, "Westward, goes 
out from the influence of such a natural atmosphere, by 

9 



58 The Sources of 

which he has been surrounded from infancy, by which 
he has been taught new conceptions of beauty, by 
which he has been inspired to perform many a forbid- 
ding duty, or braced up to many a difficult undertaking. 
He cannot transfer to his ncAV home these sterner as- 
pects of nature, whose inarticulate language has been 
to him like the voice of an unwearying and sleepless 
monitor ; nor can he transport the rugged soil that has 
a thousand times broken or rejected his plowshare; 
nor the short seasons, that have driven him to provident 
and industrious husbandry ; nor the small profits, that 
have rendered him faithful to particulars and a snug 
calculator. He cannot take with him, the mountain 
range, that has cast its morning or evening shadow 
of protection upon the little farm that nestled along 
the water-brook beneath it, or crept up to its cold and 
forbidding shoulder; where he has watched the tender- 
leaved Spring as she has put on her garments of green ; 
the Summer in her mature beauty; the Autumn in her 
crimson richness ; the Winter, as she wallced in white. 
He goes out from the influence of all these inanimate 
faces of J^ature and K^ature's God. They have given 
him their blessing from his earliest infanc}^ They 
give him a reluctant, almost reproving, benediction 
now. But they go not with him. He cannot import 
them. When our young men are urged to follow the 
star of empire across the Mississij)pi, to embark their 
energies in the great enterprises of the West, even 
though New England farms and hamlets become a 
desolation, or go into the possession of the alien, shall 
we not remind them, that when they have left behind 
their backs the soil, the climate, the scenery of their 



N'eio England Civilization. 59 

native region, tliey have forsaken the snrroundings in 
which Xew England characteristics have had their 
natnral development; Avhich are the natnral conserva- 
tors of these characteristics? The brilliancy of a gem 
sometimes depends as much upon its setting as upon 
itself. It is the setting and the stone combined, that 
produce the cifect sought. And ISTew England 
character has its true surroundings among its own 
green and granite hills, its lakes that flash like a mirror 
in the sunlight, and its rivers that go enriching its 
intervales down to the gray old Ocean, that daily 
baptizes anew its Eastern shores. 

A third source of 'New England Civilization, are 
Kew England Institutions. And these, of course, are 
the family, the school, the church and the state. In 
jSTew England, each of these has a peculiar stamp and 
type; and, therefore, exerts a peculiar influence. Men 
talk about institutions, just as they talk about climate 
and soil ; as though the grand object in establishing 
them, consisted in what we can make them to be, and 
not in what they do for us. We talk about men's 
making institutions. But institutions make men, as 
well; just as, and even more than climate, scenery, 
soil. 

It is saying scarcely too much, to claim that a nation 
is formed in the cradle of its infants. At any rate, 
the true statesman must admit, that the family is the 
moral nursery of the state ; that before leaving the care 
of its mother, the little child .already has, in embryo, 
the qualities that will distinguish him as a citizen. If 
he is to prove true to his obligations to his fellow citi- 



60 The Sources of 

zens, he has ah'eady shown it in the miniature common- 
wealth of which he is a member; if he is to be a law- 
breaker, he has already deserved and had foretastes of 
the cell and the dungeon. I am not speaking here of 
tendencies, but of determined character. The mother 
sometimes trembles at the exhibition of passion, of 
which some of her little brood are capable. She 
trembles, not so much for the present as the future. 
Such outbreaks are comparatively safe, in this realm 
of love over which she presides. She mingles pity 
and the persuasive eloquence of her own tender eye, 
with her eftbrts at restraint. But, the tribunal of 
society is not made up of such stuif as mothers are. 
Society has little j^atience with offenders; while its 
attempts to restrain criminals, are frequently so 
administered as to confirm them in their downward 
courses. The many recommitments for the same or 
worse crimes, tell fearfully against the pi'acticability 
of really reforming men in prisons and houses of 
correction. It is the good family that makes the child 
the good citizen. And our schools of reform are 
practically ^'aluable, only in proportion as they can be 
made to assume the character and impart the influ- 
ences of the family. 

]N^ew England families have been, and are still, in 
some good measure, peculiar for the exercise of 
parental authority and restraint over the tastes and 
tendencies, the character and habits of children. Law 
is the same in the domestic circle, as in the govern- 
ment of man, as in the government of God. Of these 
two governments, our children and youth are prospec- 
tive citizens and subjects, I enter upon no defence of 



New JEncflnnd Civilization. 61 

parental severity, or arbitrariness. Let there be as 
much of reason and love in parental government, as 
is possible. But, I insist that there must be govern- 
ment; that the sovereignty of law must be recognized 
and inculcated, or the family is untrue alike to the 
government of man and to the government of God. 
And to my mind, one of the most discouraging aspects 
of our own time is the ridicule and decline of parental 
government on the part of so man}^ of our iiative-born, 
and the almost total abuse and perversion of it, on the 
part of nearly all our foreign-born citizens. If obedi- 
ence to law be not taught at home, it is almost never 
taught. And if obedience to law be not taught, liberty 
is a curse, and the larger it is, the greater the curse. 

I repeat it : The individual family is the first type 
of civil government, the first school of the future 
citizen. And were our families what they should be, 
did they furnish the proper j^reliminary training, e^'ery 
child born in an American household, whether in 
mansion or hut, in city or hamlet, on hill-top or prairie, 
would ordinarily grow up to become a useful, indus- 
trious and loyal member of the body politic. Let us 
suppose, now, that it is well enough with the children 
of IN^ew England parentage ; that they are brought up 
in the good old style of the fathers, or even a better 
one, if you prefer. How is it with those children of 
foreigners, those children who have no i^ew England 
home ; who have no persons that can be properly called 
either parents or guardians ; who never knew the lan- 
guage of parental love or parental reproof, except that 
of objurgation and reproach ; and Avho are never taught 
childhood prayers or childhood hymns of praise ; who 



62 The Sources of 

have neither table, hearth nor altar, around whiclrthey 
ever gather in the capacity of a family; who have 
examples of intemperance, Sabbath-breaking and other 
vices, set them by those who are their divinely-appoint- 
ed instructors; among whom theft and lying and 
profanity are commonplace occurrences: how is it, 
with this not' inconsiderable, and rapidly increasing 
element in New England Civilization? These boys 
and girls, standing upon the street-corners of our 
cities; appearing in all our larger towns and villages; 
these boys and girls, Avhose tongues are I'eady with 
the keenest slang or repartee for the luckless pedes- 
trian, who ventifres to remonstrate upon an obstructed 
sidewalk, or a poor forlorn cat with a tin pail at her 
tail, fleeing away from a shower of paving-stones: 
how shall they be saved to themselves and to the 
State? According to our theory of government, we 
cannot dispose of the morally deformed, as the Spartans 
did of the physically deformed. We are compelled to 
take them into our Civilization. Every citizen, be he 
blessed or cursed by his parentage, is a living stone, 
that must go up into our civil structure. And I confess, 
that I fear less the domination and intrigues of 
ecclesiastics ; I fear less the influence of a religious 
system, whose very theory and structure are anti- 
democratic, are anti-republican, than the fact that the 
children of our foreign-born citizens have not the 
blessed influences of a Hew England home; are not 
taught reverence for truth and reverence for God, as 
it is customary for the children of l^ew England 
parentage to be taught, 



^ew England Civilization. 63 

There were grand elements, doubtless, the grandest 
possibilities, in the boy Daniel AVebster. But, wlio 
shall say, how much his greatness of character, how 
much his peerless achievement, was owing to those 
Psalms of David which he so wonderfully recited to 
the passing traveler, in that humble cottage of his 
father, amid I^ew Hampshire forests, on the banks of 
the Merrimack ; v/as owing to the serious views of life 
taught him by a father, whom he so deeply revered ; 
by a mother, whom he loved with all the strength of 
his magnificent nature? I^qw England homes lie at 
the basis of Xew England Civilization. There may 
be homely fare, there may be ingenious devices to 
make " auld claes look amaist as weel's the new;" to 
make the two ends of the year meet, Avith a little to 
lay by for that rainy day which, in fancy, always hangs 
over the ^ew England future: but 3^ou will usually 
find there, thoughtful views of life and of life's work ; 
young minds and young hearts full of noble aspirations, 
and a resolute determination to live to some purpose, 
in one's day and generation. 

i^ext removed from the JN^ew England family stands 
the ]^ew England school. I speak here of the common, 
the public school; my limits forbid any allusion to 
higher institutions. The I^ew England school is 
almost as peculiar as the Kew England family; an 
institution as influential, not merely or mainly because 
of the amount of instruction imparted, though in it, 
enough of this may be accomplished to make almost 
any position of future eminence attainable; an insti- 
tution, whose general diflusion and annual expendi- 



64 The Sources of 

tiires teach the estimate which the State puts upon 
inteUigeiice; an institution, where children are early 
brought into those relations of comparison and compe- 
tition, which so largely determine the future of 
American men and women; an institution, in which 
self-denjdng laborers secretly and wisely and pain- 
fully build up those structures of human character, 
upon which the society of the next generation is to 
rest: like the coral-insects, themselves contented 
never to appear above the surface, except in the islands 
of tropical greenness which finally round out and 
embellish their patient endeavor. I think the eminent 
statesman, above alluded to, never wrote a more 
touching, or eloquent letter, than that penned from 
the chair of State in Washington, to his old master 
Tappan, thus closing : 

■"^ I thank you again, my good old schoolmaster, for 
" your kind letter, which has awakened many sleepless 
"recollections; and with all good wishes, I remain 
" your friend and pupil, 

DAOTEL WEBSTER." 

It is said that before the advent of the Messiah, 
every Jewish mother hailed the birth of a son, as the 
possible Desire of all nations. Oh! ye toilers, day 
after day, and week after week, and month after 
month, and year after year, in the school-rooms of 
^ew England, be not discouraged; despise not your 
work. Doubtless there are those, under your self- 
denying tuition, whose future eminence, intellectual 
and moral, shall gild your old age with a glory like 
that which the fame of I^ew England's greatest 



New England Civilization, 65 

statesman shed upon the gray locks of old Master 
Tappan. Toil on, amid the petty peevishness of pa- 
rents, seeking' to undo their errors, and to retrieve their 
mistakes ; toil on, through wet and dry, through heat 
and cold: there is no nobler work on earth than yours. 
And precisely here is ^NTew England's hope respect- 
ing the children of her foreign-born citizens. Here, 
in our schools, may be in some measure accomplished, 
what has been neglected in many of our fiimilies. 
Our children may be taught the significance and 
sacredness of law. True, the most summary method 
of dealing with children that have been brow-beaten 
and scolded all their days, is to continue and intensify 
the same process ; is to arm yourself with strap and 
rattan, to add to your vocabulary all the epithets of 
sarcasm and abuse in your power, and still persist in 
the attempt to exorcise poor human nature on the 
same line adopted by disciplinarians at home. Horace 
says that "nature will come back, though expelled 
with a fork:" he might have said, all the more because 
expelled with a fork. For, this is the kind of exorcism, 
which nature does the most resist. You cannot cast 
out Beelzebub by Beelzebub. You cannot reach 
moral results, by purely physical means. The regimen 
of treatment you adopt, will only intensify the war- 
fare which there is in the child's bosom, against law as 
a merely outward restraint. You bring yourself down 
to the lower platform of the criminal code. In such 
a government as our own, what we most need among 
the people, is the sense and appreciation of law,, as an 
invisible power and influence. As with the Divine 
govei'nment, so with the most perfect of human. It 

10 



66 The Sources of 

is not constantly asserting itself. It is not constantly 
assuming terrible aspects, and thundering with its 
dark enginery of penalties. There is this dark back- 
ground to all law, whether human or Divine; but, 
for the truest and highest style of obedience it is not 
adequate; it is not conducive to it. Children that 
have been kept from disobedience at home and, at 
school, merely from the fear of physical punishment, 
may be kept from breaking laws by holding up 
before them the prospect of a term at the reform- 
school or in the state-prison. But, you thus institute 
a warfare between the child and law. He never 
learns to love law as a rule of right. In the ideal sense, 
he never becomes fit for citizenship. These future 
citizens must have moral education, or they never can 
be qualified for their duties to the State. And failing 
in this, at home, it must be furnished them in the 
public school. And infinitely above all acquisitions 
in Arithmetic, Geography or Grammar, is the coming 
to feel that law is a holy thing; and that to wage 
warfare with it, or with its ministers, is not only 
unsafe, but is a dishonor to themselves and an injury 
to the public weal, of which they themselves are soon 
to become a part. 

The next institution indicated as a source of 'New 
England Civilization, is the Church. And, of course, 
this term is employed here in the most general 
manner. It means, that aggregate association, which 
represents, if it does not always include, the spiritual 
Kingdom of God among men; which accepts His law, 
as of present abiding force, and His ordinances as the 



N^ew England Civilization. 67 

true instrumentality for making man what he should 
be, whether in his relations to his Maker or to his 
brother man. Of this association, of this kingdom, 
the Bible is the hand-book and exposition. Say what 
men will, think what they dare not say, in the last 
analysis, the Bible, and the influences which have 
proceeded from it, have shaped ]S"ew England Civihz- 
ation. That single day of rest in each week, a green 
island amid a melancholy waste of waters ; that respite 
from the toils of this world, the sound of Sabbath 
bells, the proclamation of the truth ; ah ! no man can 
calculate what stability and serenity these influences 
have given to ^ew England life. France tried a 
Republic, not only ^^dthout the Bible and without a 
Sabbath, but trampling the Bible and the Sabbath 
and the immortahty of the soul under foot; denying 
and repudiating them, and substituting an artificial 
and infidel division of tune, for that winch had been 
established by Jehovah. What was the result ? I need 
not remind you. But you say, "France was not pre- 
pared for a Republic." With a Bible and a Sabbath, 
a Republic would have been far more feasible for 
France, than without them. "With a ]^ew England 
Sabbath, a republic might have been possible, even in 
France. 

God has never been without a witness in the insti- 
tutions of Kew England ; and amid all its variety, this 
is the basis of that seriousness in JSTew England 
character, which has given it such a power over the 
destinies of the nation. This is the basis, too, of that 
love for human equality, which has now become and 
must always remain the predominant idea of this great 



68 The Sources of 

people. Says an acute French philosopher and divine: 
" The sentiment of human equality is always in exact 
" 251'oportion with the sentiment of God's presence ; 
" because we want a basis for man's respect for man, 
" and this basis can be no other than God." Every 
sanctuary, therefore, in these JS^ew England valleys, 
or standing' like a sentinel upon her hill-tops, has been 
a protest against the rights of man in human flesh and 
blood. And if those, who have frequented these 
sanctuaries, have sometimes been slower to discover 
this than your Garrison and your "Wendell Phillips, 
still let the credit be given where it belongs. For, I 
believe, it was the religious sentiment of ]N^ew 
England that originated and found expression in 
President Lincoln's Proclamation. It was the relig- 
ious sentiment of the country, derived not from 
'^Liberators'^ and ^ Lidependeyits,^ though conveyed 
through them, and quickened by them, that carried us 
safely through the recent war; and whi<3h has lately 
given itself expression in such swollen tides of majority, 
against the policy of the man, whom the bullet of an 
assassin and not the ballots of the people put into the 
Presidential chair at Washington. 

It has been said by Count Gasparin, and with great 
justice and force, that the Christian virtues that appear 
in the families of infidels, are to be ascribed, not to 
infidelity, but to the influence of that Christian civili- 
zation, in which these families had their growth; 
whose life-giving atmosphere they have breathed. If 
a man denies the truth of the Christian religion, and 
is yet evidently moulded by its spirit, Christianity and 
not infidelity deserves the credit. And so in the 



JVeio England Civilization. 69 

advance of Christian civilization, men may be put 
forward as standard-bearers, may become the repre- 
sentatives of a Christian idea, who in other respects, 
think the thoughts and talk the dialect of pagans. 
Which shall have the credit of their Christian ideas. 
Paganism or Christianity? A few years ago, some of 
these very men, whom we now canonize, in political 
saintship, went about the country unchurching 
churches, pronouncing maledictions upon ministers 
and church-members, and execrating the Bible 
and the sanctuary. And, yet, all their boasted 
humanity, and more, was embraced in these words of 
the Author of Christianity : " All things whatsoever 
" ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so 
" to them." And that their views have triumphed, is 
owing to that life and power, which they received 
from God and not from man. 

The only remaining institution mentioned above, as 
the source of I*^ew England Civilization, is the State ; 
a word intended to comprehend that system by which 
our rulers are elected, and our laws made and 
enforced. 

Such a political system as that which prevails in 
this country, is a powerful educator of the i^eople. 
Here, of course, comes in the mighty enginery of the 
press; discussing all topics that relate to the public 
welfare, recording criminal acts, the decisions of 
judges, the opinions of emir. Tien ; in a word, 

causing the whole civil and political life of the people 
to become one moving panorama, upon which each 
citizen may look as often as he takes up the daily 



70 The Sources of 

news. The State, of course, is the resultant of the 
civihzation of the people. The primary electors, the 
men who make, and the men who execute the laws, 
the men who determine judicial questions, are the 
offspring and the representatives of this civilization. 
And these embodiments of our civilization re-act upon 
that civilization itself. When Governor Andrew of 
Massachusetts delayed the execution of the Maiden 
murderer, he confronted the civilization of the State, 
of which he was the chief Executive. Every man, 
woman and child, who knew of the crime, discussed 
his reasons for thus stepping in between the criminal 
and the penalty of the law, the sentence of the judge ; 
aye, discussed anew, the whole theory of capital pun- 
ishment. 

All the great questions of public policy, which have 
been before the nation, during the last four or live 
years, have put the people to school; have taught 
them to scrutinize men and measures, to analyze the 
first principles of government. The re-organization 
of that portion of the nation lately in rebellion, will 
have cost the people and their rulers as much thought, 
will have educated them as much, as its original 
formation. We are coming to have clearer ideas of 
the genius of our institutions; of the meaning of the 
word citizen, and of the prerogatives of citizenship. 
The grand first principles of the Declaration of 
Independence, which, unfortunatel}^ for his memory, 
otherwise so resplendent, one of our gifted public 
men once stigmatized as a "glittering generality," 
after these long years, begins to take its place in the 
firmament of the nation's thought j begins to shine out 



New England Civilization. tl 

from the smoke of the battle-field with a heavenly 
lustre ; just as there are stars of the first magnitude, 
which are thousands of years bringing their serene 
rays to bear upon the eyes of men. And what the 
nation does in general, each State does in particular. 
There are local interests constantly demanding exami- 
nation ; there are local questions constantly demanding 
discussion, which keep the public mind always upon 
the alert; which sharpen the percejDtions, and modify 
or confirm the moral bias of the people. 

Thus imperfectly have I attempted to pass under 
notice, some of the sources of Ill^ew England civiliza- 
tion; some of the historical, the physical and moral 
forces that have thus far determined the distinctive 
^'cliaracter of ISTew Englanders; a nationality no less 
real, because it has only imaginary national limits. It 
is a civilization of which Ils^ew Englanders may well 
be proud. It is intelligent, it is moral, it is religious, 
it is heroic. And, surely, it is one of the ofiices of such 
an organization as that which I have the honor, this 
evening, to address, so to hold up before the eyes of 

c 

the living, the civilization of the past — so to analyze 
its sources and to record its results, — as to awaken 
sufficient enthusiasm to transmit it unimpaired and 
improved, so far as it may be improved, to the genera- 
tions that are to come. 

JSTo man can predict the future of this great nation. 
That its future will be grandly noble, or grandly 
disastrous, the events of the past render very apparent ; 
and that N^ew England will have her full share in 
determining this future, we cannot for one moment 



'72 The Sources of JSTeio Erigland Civilization. 

doubt. I iDcgan this discussion with an alhision to 

one of the great South American rivers; let me close 

it with an allusion to another, just visited and explored 

by the eminent naturalist, whose love for science has 

led him to expatriate himself from his native land, and 

who this evening stands in our modern Athens, in his 

somewhat broken, but most forcible and beautiful 

language, giving his report of that wonderful region. 

It is said of the Amazon, that for fifty miles seaward, 

she bears down and annihilates the tides of Old 

Ocean itself; giving her own color and freshness to 

the waters which she meets from another continent. 

So mighty, so diffusive, so decided, so individual, let 

the civilization of IS[ew England be in the future, and 

the civilization of the country is safe ; there will be no \ ^ 

lapsing back into barbarism; there will be onward 

progress, till His coming, whose kingdom knows not 

the metes and bounds of countries and times, but will 

be universal, and will endui^e forever ! 



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